Let’s not let the State look after our kids

A failing welfare regime has produced an epidemic of dysfunctional parents.

It’s not often that I agree with Dame Susan Devoy but she’s been doing the rounds telling horror stories about kids in State care. A government study tracked 58,000 children born in 1989 and found 83 per cent of those who ended up in prison had been in the custody of Child Youth and Family.

This isn’t surprising. Using violence to smash up a family tends to have negative impacts on both the child and parents.

It was in 1989 that New Zealand adopted the family group conferences ushered in by the Children, Young Persons and their Family’s

Act, in response to acknowledged failings of State care.

To appreciate how bad things had been previously The Confidential Listening and Assistance Service was established where victims of the government’s compassion prior to 1992 could tell their stories. Their report, published in 2015, confirmed in grim detail the physical, sexual and mental abuse children experienced while in the gentle care of the State.

It comes as no surprise that nearly a century of a paternalist welfare regime that discourages stable families and encourages children to become solo mothers has produced an epidemic of dysfunctional parents. So there are going to be some children whose lives and physical wellbeing requires them to be separated from their parents; but that number is not the staggering 5700 and growing children in care.

Think of the children you know and, in the absence of a government department devoted to dismembering families, how do you think a community would react to a child suffering at the hands of failing parents? Someone would step in. A grandparent, uncle, priest, would intervene.

State intervention should be the last, final, desperate act but instead it’s become the default setting and it’s been a complete failure. We should stop doing it.

The last government established the Ministry for Vulnerable Children with an endowment of over 3000 staff. Almost one for every kid in State care. This is a Ministry whose existence depends on finding and rescuing lost children.

So determined is the State to find children to save the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Act 2017 was passed to ensure that every government agency is compelled to report on and find children who need saving despite CYF receiving over 150,000 notifications regarding children in that same year.

We have a welfare system that provides a financial incentive for

State intervention should be the last, final, desperate act but instead it's become the default setting and it's been a complete failure.

those emotionally and financially unprepared to have children and a government department devoted to removing their children from them when they do.

Tragically, this is going to continue for the indefinite future.